ALBERT B. CASUGA, a Philippine-born writer, lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where he continues to write poetry, fiction, and criticism after his retirement from teaching and serving as an elected member of his region's school board. He was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. A graduate of the Royal and Pontifical University of St. Thomas (now University of Santo Tomas, Manila. Literature and English, magna cum laude), he taught English and Literature (Criticism, Theory, and Creative Writing) at the Philippines' De La Salle University and San Beda College. He has authored books of poetry, short stories, literary theory and criticism. He has won awards for his works in Canada, the U.S.A., and the Philippines. His latest work, A Theory of Echoes and Other Poems was published February 2009 by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. His fiction and poetry were published by online literary journals Asia Writes and Coastal Poems recently.
He was a Fellow at the 1972 Silliman University Writers Workshop, Philippines. As a journalist, he worked with the United Press International and wrote an art column for the defunct Philippines Herald.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

A DIVE INTO ORIGIN

A Photo by Bobby Wong, Jr., Ifugao Rice Terraces, Philippines

A DIVE INTO ORIGIN

What would I give to be a vein on the side of the red maple whose leaves tremble in the wind? I want to be plucked like that again, tuned to singing....Every now and then I crave the iron taste of swamp spinach, the thin scraps that tether marrow to the inside of bone. Something true, unapologetic; something that doesn’t merely settle into the background, fade into the atmosphere, trick you into thinking this is all there can be, and nothing more.---Luisa Igloria. “Lament”, Via Negativa

The lilt of a noseflute over the farthest reaches
Of the valley is an echo of sundown orisons
You long for; it is as true as the joy of a harvest
Dance, and laughter over who finds the longest
Marrow inside the butchered offering’s bones,
Or cull the biggest bowl of buffalo’s ligaments
That could float or sink int0 the vats of caldo,
Keeping us all warm and raring for jars of basiWhile we sing or even howl carousing songs
Known only to this edge of the terraces where
Endless sunsets will mark the birth and rebirth
Of the fondest and happiest remembrances
Of a time gone by that villagers thought was all
That can be, and nothing more. Thus, a sacrifice.
You grew beyond those magical full moon rituals,
And discovered your own necromancy elsewhere
Where dead worlds are decreed alive again from
Your throne of songs and words, where finally
You feel the throb of these mountains in your
Veins and wish they were plucked like strings
In your heart and make you sing as the happy
Child that must return with the sun, again and
Again, in glorious bravura over these blue hills,
Unapologetic, and never merely a background.

---Albert B. Casuga
04-11-12

*Caldo - Bone Soup; Basi - Sugar Cane Wine

This is poem # 11 in the poem-a-day effort to celeberate National Poetry Month (April). Triggered by Luisa A. Igloria's poem "Lament" (published in Dave Bonta's Via Negativa), it is part of the poetic collaboration we started a year ago.

A. B. Casuga's works are anthologized in A Habit of Shores by G. H. Abad (UP Press), Introduction to Poetry by Edith Tiempo et al (Silliman University), and has been published in journals and magazines in Philippines, Canada, United States, and Australia.